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SCIENTIFIC SPIRITUALISM 



A SERMON 

BY THE 

REV. CHARLES WOOD, D.D. 



Preached in the I 

CHURCH OF THE COVENANT 
WASHINGTON, D. C 



'Printed by ^he Session 



SUNDAY MORNING 
FEBRUARY 22. 1920 



Gift 
Mrs. Wm, H. Baldwin 













Scientific Spiritualism 

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God." 

Rev. 20, 12. 



They had passed through the grave and were still alive. 

They were standing at attention, waiting to hear the ver- 

6 diet of the Judge, to be rendered according to the record 

■i in the books that had just been opened. They could speak 

understandingly and unstammeringly to God. " Every man 

shall give account of himself unto God. ' ' 

Could they at any previous time have communicated with 
the friends they left behind on earth? This is an inter- 
rogation that multitudes have put to themselves more 
often in the last few weeks than ever before. Crowds have 
listened with rapt attention to the famous scientist who is 
called a spiritualist, like the crowds that gathered on the 
Jordan around John the Baptist in anticipation of the 
announcement of a new dispensation. 

A more interesting, impressive and imposing personality 
than that of this twentieth century prophet, our modern 
world would needs go far to find. Sir Oliver Lodge was 
formerly President of the British Scientific Association. He 
is a discoverer and interpreter along many lines of scientific 
investigation. He is the inventor of machinery already in 
part successful for the dispelling of fog. For a decade or 
more he has been the most convincing advocate of the soli- 
darity of truth and, therefore, of the harmony of science and 
religion. His " Substance of Faith," the first scientific state- 
ment of its sort ever made, it may be, is invaluable for the 
scientific skeptic. 

He was trained in the agnostic schools of the mid- Victorian 
days, when young men who wished to be thought intel- 
lectual went about with Darwin's "Origin of Species " un- 
der their arms. "This book," says Professor Kidd, "had 
become the Bible . of the doctrine of the omnipotence of 
force," the rock on which the German ship of state split 
and foundered. Those were the days when even in this 
country ministers were asked by scientific parvenus on 
what particular Sunday they would lock up their churches 
and announce the consummation of Christianity in volun- 
tary bankruptcy. While Darwin, Spencer, Huxley and 
Tyndall all denied that they were materialists, many of 
their disciples boasted that they were thorough-going 



monists, because, as they explained it, they were more logical 
than their masters. 

Sir Oliver in the maturity of his powers became interested 
in the investigations of the Society of Psychical Research. 
Two of his particular friends, Mr. Myers and Mr. Gurney, 
were leaders in this movement and altogether convinced 
that the dead still live. There is, it is true, nothing startling 
in this conclusion. Many of the pagan philosophers, Pythag- 
oras, Plutarch, Socrates and Plato, all believed it. The 
modern philosophers as well, Descartes, Liebknitz, Kant and 
Lotze, have agreed with them. Poets, both ancient and 
modern, have been of the same opinion, like Dante, Shake- 
speare, Milton, Tennyson, and Browning. But Sir Oliver's 
friends reached the conclusion, to which he himself also a 
little later arrived, along quite different lines of approach. 

In 1909 both the religious and scientific worlds were 
startled by the appearance of a book called "The Survival 
of Man," by Sir Oliver Lodge. In this he stated that the 
boundary between the two states, the. known and the un- 
known is so thin that we may hear the sound of voices on 
the other side and understand what they say. 

On September 14, 1915, his son Raymond was killed at 
Ypres. He was a fine flower of a civilization, as fine as any 
the world has seen. He had his father's piercing intelli- 
gence, and his mother's sweetness of disposition and great- 
ness of heart. He was both a scholar and an athlete. He 
was strong, brave and clean. Sir Oliver was stunned by his 
death. When able to pull himself together, he concentrated 
all his energies upon communicating with his lost boy. He 
tells us in the book he soon published called "Raymond, 
or Life and Death," that his efforts succeeded beyond all 
his hopes. "Every ground of suspicion and doubt has been 
removed," he says, "from the minds of all the members of 
his family, temperamentally skeptical." 

Raymond apparently had changed very little, in his ex- 
change of worlds. He thinks and speaks exactly as he did. 
before the bullet ended his life on earth. "Tell Father," he 
says, ' ' That I am happy, ' ' and then he adds, as if to a crowd 
of congenial companions, like the friends of his college days, 
"Good God, how father will be able to speak out now." 

Since the book was written, Sir Oliver has received many 
other communications, he says, from those who have "gone 
west." Some of these are extremely complicated, but their 
very complication he thinks makes them more convincing, 
which may be true as the possibility of collusion and com- 
plicity is lessened. 



One example he gives of this sort of communication is in- 
teresting in a literary way, as well as from many other 
sides. When Mr. Myers was asked at Sir Oliver's request: 
"What conditions are most favorable for the reception of 
communications?" the mysterious reply was received, 
"Plotinus." "In Memoriam." There is a famous descrip- 
tion in Plotinus of a calm evening as well known as Xeno- 
phon's description of the sea. The name of Plotinus sent 
Greek scholars to the passage where they found an evening 
described of calmness so perfect that not only were the 
leaves unstirred, but the flame of a lighted candle was un- 
wavering. Then "In Memoriam" Avas searched, and in the 
ninety-fifth section Tennyson gives his portrayal of a calm 
as perfect as that depicted by Plotinus. 

' ' By night we lingered on the lawn 
For underfoot the herb was dry, 
And genial warmth; and o'er the sky 
The silver haze of summer drawn. 

And calm, that let the tapers burn 

Unwavering. Not a cricket chirr 'd, 

The brook alone far off was heard, 
And on the board the fluttering urn. 

A hunger seized my heart, I read 

Of that glad year which once had been, 

In those fallen leaves which kept their green, 

The noble letters of the Dead. 

So word bv word and line bv line, 

The dead man touched me from the past, 
And all at once it seemed, at last, 

The Living Soul was flashed on mine. 



7 y 



It is not only beautiful but well within the realm of the 
possible, poetically interpreted. A calm such as Plotinus and 
Tennyson described enveloping the spirit, would be an 
ideal condition for all communications demanding close at- 
tention, yet we feel there might be some other explanation 
of the conjunction of the two pictures than that of Sir 
Oliver, though we may not be able to suggest it. 

To many minds everything of this sort is a coincidence. 
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than 
thou dreamest of," is sufficient, and all that is necessary to 
express their feelings, with an added shrug of the shoulders. 



To others these are proofs ''strong as Holy Writ." To still 
others they suggest unspeakable possibilities yet to be de- 
veloped, it may be, through the open door of spirituality 
rather than spiritualism. 

A wave of scientific and unscientific spiritualism is sweep- 
ing over England and America. Newspapers are full of 
advertisements of mediums who promise communications as 
prompt and certain as by wireless. Ouija-boards are be- 
coming as common as victrolas. Sir Oliver uttered his 
warning the first day after landing in New York, against 
over-reliance on this one-time toy. Many cases of insanity, 
it is stated, have been caused in England by various forms of 
unscientific, spiritualistic activity. It is also said that the 
faith of some has been strengthened. Great peace and joy 
have come to the bereaved now that they are sure their loved 
ones live. But even the Egyptians four thousand years ago 
were sure of that. 

Our attitude toward scientific spiritualism should be sym- 
pathetic, as towards scientific investigation of every sort. 
To assert dogmatically that it is impossible that there should 
ever be any communication between the living and- the 
dead, is to be wise above what is written. We may be per- 
sonally convinced that no communication has yet taken place 
between Mars and the Earth. It may also be our opinion 
that such communication is highly improbable. But, with 
the memory of what has been accomplished even in the last 
decade, which of us would like to say that through all 
the decades that are to come, signals from the planets will 
never be received? Of some things we may be sure. Such 
signals, if possible, will never be seen or understood by the 
doubters or by the dull of eye or ear, and assuredly not by 
jolly groups of young people, out on a bright night for a 
lark. Mysteries in science and in every phase of human 
knowledge will be solved, if solved at all, by trained 
specialists. 

But, while our attitude should be sympathetic, it should 
also be circumspect and cautious. We should remind our- 
selves, as someone has said, that mystery is not the premise 
of which the miraculous or the supernatural is the necessary 
conclusion. We should insist upon scientific methods for the 
discovery of new truth, — the investigation of evidence, the 
examination of supposed facts, inference from such, ex- 
aminations, and verification of the correctness of our con- 
clusions. We must remind ourselves also of the temptation 
which constantly besets us to surrender the substance for 
the shadow. The dog in the fable who had grasped a large 



bone and was on his delighted way home, as he crossed a 
bridge, saw the reflection of himself in the water. The bone 
in the river looked so much larger and juicier than the one 
in his mouth that he snapped at it, and went on his way a 
wiser and a sadder dog. Sir Conan Doyle believes that com- 
munications from spirits are a source of information con- 
cerning invisible things of the world beyond, so much more 
perfect than anything we have thus far known that all other 
sources like the Scriptures are superfluous and obsolete, 
He gives them up. But is it not as true now as when the 
Quaker poet Whittier sang : 

"We search the world for Truth, we cull, 
The true, the good, the beautiful, 
From graven stone and written scroll, 
From all flower-fields of the soul. 
And weary seekers for the best, 
We come back laden from our quest 
To find that all the sages said 
Is in the book our Mothers read. ' ' 

Such an old time mother whose son was gassed and died 
writes : "I love to think of him as at rest, safe from hunger, 
thirst and pain and death. I am glad to know that God 
Himself has dried his eyes, and that they look lovingly into 
each other's faces and that God's name is on my boy's fore- 
head. ' ' All that she found in the Old Book. 

Sir Oliver has rendered both the scientific and religious 
world a great service in calling attention, not only to the 
possibility, but to the reality of communication with the 
Invisible Spirit, the fountain and source of all spirits. Far 
more significant than the stammering voices of many spirits 
seeking to get their messages through, is the voice of the 
Father of Spirits speaking plainly in our own souls. "What 
our generation needs," it is said, "is attention to the voice 
within." "The best in us is God," and through that best 
God speaks. 

Sir Oliver, like the muezzin who goes up into the minaret 
and calls the world to prayer, climbs to the highest peak of 
the tall watch-tower constructed by all the skill of modern 
science and philosophy, and deliberately summons all men, 
scientists, secularists or saints, to their knees. "Prayer is 
a means of communion as natural and as simple as speech," 
he says. "It is a part of the orderly cosmos, and may be an 
efficient portion of the guiding and controlling will. Our 
wishes and desires are part of the Divine scheme. Our hopes 
and desires exert an influence beyond their conscious range." 



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Have we exhausted all the possibilities of this method of 
communication that we must needs gather in groups in 
darkened rooms, to listen to mediums whom we tempt with 
money to tell us what is already written, it may be, in our 
subliminal consciousness ? 

Or have we appropriated all the information about the 
life to come, given us in Christ's words, life, death and 
resurrection? "As Jesus died and rose again, even so them 
also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. " In one 
of his communications Raymond says: "There is a Christ, 
and he lives on the higher plane, and that is the one I was 
permitted to see. Mother, I thrilled from head to foot. The 
voice was like a bell." Such a communication is unspeak- 
ably interesting, but is it as impressive, convincing and satis- 
fying as that which John has given us : "I was in the spirit, ' ; 
he says, "on the Lord's day. And I heard a voice behind 
me like the blast of a trumpet, saying, 'I am Alpha and 
Omega, the First and the Last. ' And when I saw Him I fell 
at His feet as dead. And He laid His right hand upon me 
saying, Fear not, I am He that liveth and was dead, and 
behold I am alive for evermore. ' ' 

Whenever we are in the spirit on the Lord's day, or on any 
day, though we may not see His face, we may hear His voice 
' ' like a bell, ' ' speaking in tones full of cheer and comfort, of 
hope and assurance, speaking in tones that have not grown 
dim or dull as time has passed : ' ' Let not your heart be 
troubled, ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's 
house are many mansions, if it were not so I would have told 
you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare 
a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, 
that where I am, there ye may be also." 



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